Stranded with Her Greek Tycoon Page 15

  ‘Yeah. It was.’

  She could see how difficult it was for him to divulge these long-held secrets, revisit unpleasant memories.

  ‘What did your poor mother do?’

  ‘She would try to get work near the prison so she could visit him whenever she could. She was a nurse. Or we would go to live with my grandparents while he was doing his time. My education was interrupted. As I got older, I lived with my grandparents even when he was out so I could have some consistency at school.’

  She searched his face, saw all the pent-up pain she had never before recognised. ‘Cristos, why didn’t you share this with me before?’

  He couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘I was brought up to be ashamed of my father. Not to ever talk about him. To believe that my lovely mother was foolish for loving him. My mother adored him. She always went back to him no matter what. Even though she must have known his promises to change were worthless.’ He sighed and Hayley wondered if he was aware of the depth of anguish he revealed. ‘Another reason my family hated him is because they think she died of a broken heart after he died. His fault, of course. The diagnosis was a fast-acting cancer but to my grandparents it was because their only daughter couldn’t live without her feckless husband.’

  ‘Tragic. And horrible for you to be left without parents.’ Was it surprising Penelope was so protective of her grandson? No wonder she’d been averse to hasty marriages with strangers.

  Cristos took her other hand so he held both clasped in his. ‘Here’s the thing. The truth I struggled with as a kid—I loved him too. I couldn’t help but love him although I wasn’t allowed to admit it. Now I’m admitting it to you. Finally.’

  ‘That’s very sad. He was your father...you were a little kid.’ In spite of all her mother’s idiosyncrasies—including a blatant dislike of Cristos—Hayley loved her mother. Her father too.

  ‘Baba was charming and fun and carried you along with him with his grand ideas—like a big kid himself, I suppose. I wanted to believe in him. Of course, he always disappointed me in the end. He disappointed everyone.’

  Hayley thought of how Cristos had struggled to recall any simple father-son moments. No wonder, with a dad in and out of prison for much of his childhood.

  ‘That’s such a sad story, Cristos. But you could have told me. I wish you had.’

  He raised his head in challenge. ‘Would you have married me if you’d known my father was a jailbird?’

  ‘Without question,’ she said immediately. ‘However, if you’d been the jailbird I might have thought twice.’ Even so. From what Cristos had said, his father was very handsome and very charming. Like father, like son. Would she have been any more capable of resisting him than his mother had been unable to resist his father?

  ‘I plead totally innocent on that one,’ he said, raising his hand as if swearing an oath. ‘My grandparents kept such a close eye on me, terrified I would turn out like my father. Any boyhood naughtiness was firmly jumped on, I assure you.’

  Sitting in the bed, with a shaft of morning sun highlighting his bare shoulders, with his hair all messed and his stubble halfway to a beard, Cristos looked every inch The Sexiest Man in Europe. ‘You probably look like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And I am a gambler. I tried to deny that instinct but I couldn’t.’

  ‘Though you channel it in a very different way. You also have a highly developed business sense that it seems your father lacked.’

  ‘And an education, which he also lacked. He was determined that I would do well at school. He wanted more for me than he ever had.’

  Hayley nodded thoughtfully. ‘So he loved you back.’

  There was a long pause before Cristos answered. ‘I guess he did. So did my mother—she didn’t want to leave me, she fought that cancer. And my grandparents care so much. I was lucky.’

  She loved him too.

  Her heart swelled with a rush of love for him.

  She had never stopped loving him.

  She wanted to tell him no one loved him more than she did, never had, never would. That while he wanted to protect her, she had always wanted to care for him. But this wasn’t the time. If she told him she loved him she would want to kiss him. She would want to cover that handsome, beloved face with kisses, kiss all over his Greek god, perfect body. She knew what that would lead to. There would be no more talk. And they still needed to talk. She had secrets to share too.

  ‘So, no one other than me knows about what you call “gambling” and what I would call “astute, high-risk investment strategy”?’ She made quote marks with her fingers.

  He smiled, white teeth against olive skin; dark, sexy stubble; raven-black hair, and those seductive green eyes. Her heart turned a somersault. Intense desire mixed with intense love—a potent mix.

  He was still her husband.

  The way she felt right now those divorce papers would never be signed. But she had to be practical. Continue the conversation. See where it led them. They might never get another chance.

  ‘That terminology would be debatable if my grandparents, who feared my turning out like my criminal father, ever found out how I earn my living these days. Playing the stock market, trading, investing in cyber products, is too intangible for them. I got in the habit of never mentioning it.’

  ‘That’s why you never thought to mention it to me.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Even though you were doing a deal involving a good deal of our money with a woman who made no secret about wanting you.’

  He shook his head. ‘She might have wanted me. Be in no doubt that I didn’t want her. I made it very clear to her that I wasn’t interested, that I loved you.’

  ‘How did she take that?’ Hayley still felt nauseous at the thought of the gorgeous-looking woman and her supercilious ways. But also somehow relieved to know she hadn’t been imagining Ginny’s interest in snagging her husband. She’d had enough other reasons at the time to question her sanity.

  ‘Ginny threatened to pull out of the deal. It was...unpleasant to say the least. I was battling it out with her on the day you lost the baby. It’s why I missed your calls. I switched off the phone so I could concentrate on salvaging the deal.’

  ‘You were with her that day? So she wasn’t lying.’

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That morning, after you’d left, Ginny called our apartment. To tell you that you’d left your jacket at her hotel room the day before. She spoke to me as if I were the maid but she knew it was me and I got the message she intended. Why was your jacket in her room?’

  Cristos cursed. ‘I was at a business meeting in the hotel suite she shared with her brother, who’d flown in from San Francisco. I was never alone with her there. I made damn sure of that. My jacket? It was still there when I went back the next day. I was on the point of walking out when thankfully her brother saw sense and the deal went through.’

  ‘To think I tortured myself over her. If you’d just told me—’

  ‘I didn’t want to stress you or upset you. Remember, there was a second reason I kept you in the dark.’

  She frowned. ‘A second reason?’ Why did that sound so ominous?

  * * *

  Cristos chose his words carefully. He dreaded hurting his beautiful, vulnerable wife. ‘This is difficult,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by difficult. But I’m sure I can take it,’ she said, obviously puzzled.

  ‘I didn’t think you could take it back then. You were too...fragile.’

  She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You changed after you got pregnant,’ he said. ‘Really changed. I didn’t have any experience of pregnant women. I knew about morning sickness, expected it.’ But not that his sweet wife would suddenly turn irrational and aggressive and accusatory in one breath, a sobbing heap in the next
.

  ‘I didn’t have morning sickness, apart from some initial queasiness.’

  ‘No. But you got very moody.’ He knew he had to be extremely careful with his choice of words. ‘I never knew what version of Hayley I’d find when I got home.’

  She got up abruptly from the bed, took a few steps away from him and then turned back. ‘Grumpy, suspicious, paranoid or just plain mean. Is that what you’re talking about?’

  He jumped up from the bed, wrapped the sheet toga-style around him. They had to be on an equal footing for this kind of conversation. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ he said cautiously. But she was right.

  Her mouth twisted. ‘You’re being kind. I was up and down and all over the place. Some days when you weren’t coming home I’d cry all day. Other days I stayed in bed unable to get up. I didn’t really know what to expect about being pregnant. I thought all that must be normal.’

  ‘Koukla, that doesn’t sound right. What did your doctor say?’ He should have been at the doctor’s appointments with her, not away working in another city.

  ‘The lovely dottoressa said I was in perfect physical health and all was progressing as it should. She spoke good English but I didn’t feel I could tell her about how I was feeling. I figured it was part and parcel of being pregnant. Turns out it wasn’t.’

  Alarm shot through him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s the gap in the story you wondered about. Now it’s my turn to share secrets. I was suffering from depression.’

  ‘You were depressed?’ He drew her into his arms, hugged her close. ‘Why didn’t I know?’ He had let her down in so many ways.

  She pulled back so she was still in the circle of his arms but could look up at him. Her face was drawn and the blue of her eyes as dull as the sea on a cloudy day. ‘I don’t want to go over old ground but you weren’t there a lot.’

  Because he’d become obsessed with accumulating wealth for her and the baby. To be the good Greek provider his father hadn’t been. He’d played his cards completely wrong.

  ‘Did the depression have anything to do with the miscarriage?’ He didn’t really know what were the right questions to ask. He went with asking the ones where he genuinely wanted to hear the answers.

  ‘They don’t know. Pre-natal depression is not that common apparently.’

  ‘Pre-natal depression? If you didn’t tell the doctor how you were feeling, how do you know that was the diagnosis?’

  Her smile was shaky around the edges. ‘I’ll have to explain backwards.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said. And not letting her go.

  ‘The day of the miscarriage I woke up feeling terrible, nauseous when I hadn’t been feeling nauseous. I had a headache but I didn’t want to take any medication. I started a row with you when you asked me what was wrong. You wanted to stay but I insisted you go. Then felt aggrieved you hadn’t insisted on staying. I couldn’t settle. The phone call from Ginny set me into a spin. Then in the afternoon the cramping started. I was petrified. That’s when I called you the first time and kept on calling you. When you didn’t answer, I called my mum. When there was blood, I called the ambulance.’

  Cristos closed his eyes against the rush of guilt and regret. ‘The next time I saw you was in the hospital. You’d lost the baby. I was devastated. Worried sick about you. You looked as white as the hospital sheets. You turned your head on the pillow and closed your eyes. Then mumbled something. I leaned closer. Only to hear you tell me you hated me and to go away.’ He’d felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a gang of thugs wearing steel-capped boots.

  ‘That was the depression speaking, even then,’ she said in a voice so low it was practically a whisper.

  ‘Then you sat up and shouted for me to leave you alone. I was escorted from the room by two burly wardsmen and not allowed back.’ His humiliation and anger was still raw.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘My memories of around that time are very hazy.’

  ‘I was your husband so I had some rights. Eventually I was told you’d been taken in for a procedure. I wouldn’t be allowed to see you until the morning—that is, if you gave me your permission.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cristos.’ He hugged her close and she buried her head against his shoulder. ‘What did you do?’ Her voice was muffled.

  ‘I found a waiting room but got kicked out of it so I went back to the apartment. I didn’t sleep. I got back to the ward in the morning to be told you’d been transferred to a private hospital. And you didn’t want me to know where.’

  ‘I can only say I’m sorry again,’ she said.

  ‘I was frantic with worry about you. But I spoke Italian and understood they believed I was an abusive husband. That perhaps my abuse had something to do with you losing the baby. I half expected to get arrested.’

  She groaned. ‘That was my parents. They’d flown to Milan after my first phone call. They listened to my delirious garble and thought the worst.’

  ‘Then they spirited you out of the country and I didn’t see you again until you turned up here. You can see what I mean about gaps.’

  She stood very still in his arms. ‘I meant it when I said I don’t remember much of that time. I fell into a deep depression, which can, apparently, happen after a miscarriage. But as the weeks went by I didn’t pull out of it as the hormones settled. My parents were so worried about me they booked me into a clinic where I was diagnosed and treated. Post-natal depression is relatively common. Not so post-miscarriage depression and pre-natal depression dating right back to the beginning of my pregnancy.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about this? I should have been there to help you.’

  ‘I’d been told you hadn’t tried to see me. I didn’t think I was going to get better. And I blamed you.’ Her voice caught at the edges.

  ‘But you did get better.’

  ‘Thankfully, with the right treatment and medication. But it took a long time. I was still on the medication when I went to Australia.’

  Cristos gritted his teeth. ‘And still the husband wasn’t told.’

  ‘You know the story of what I did there. How I became the person I wanted to be. Maybe I needed to grow up. Maybe I’d be a better wife now.’

  Hope flared. ‘What do you mean, “be a better wife”?’

  ‘I was speaking hypothetically,’ she said hastily.

  ‘You came here to divorce me,’ he said. ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  She twisted back out of his arms. ‘Yes. No. I’m not sure of anything after last night.’

  ‘Could we make our marriage work again?’

  She raised her beautiful blue eyes to him and he could see they were still clouded by uncertainty. ‘We learned so much about each other this morning. Then there was last night—it meant a lot, Cristos.’

  He pulled her back to him, held her so close he could feel her heat through their informal attire of towel and toga. ‘It meant a lot to me too, koukla.’ She might still have doubts but he didn’t. ‘And I’m sure I want us to be together again.’

  ‘But there’s still a lot more to learn. We’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m frightened we might make the same mistakes.’

  ‘You yourself said we were different people. Surely we’ve learned from our mistakes. You are my wife and I don’t want to let you go again. We’ve got time today to find out everything you need to give our marriage a second chance.’

  He was about to set out a plan of action that would include more time in that big bed, followed by some serious discussion about what a shared future could involve. Then his mobile phone rang. Alex.

  He listened to his cousin. ‘I’ll be down,’ he said and terminated the call.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Hayley.

  Cristos strode over to the balcony doors and flung first the shutters open and then the doors.
Sunlight streamed in from a blue sky clear but for a few drifting white clouds. Snow on the tree canopies sparkled with reflected sunbeams. Beyond was a millpond-calm sea in shades of aquamarine and turquoise. A perfect crisp winter’s day on Kosmimo.

  Cristos cursed under his breath. He would so much have preferred to see choppy, stormy water that would keep Hayley on the island.

  He stepped aside. ‘You can see for yourself. The storm has blown itself out. No fresh snow has fallen.’

  Hayley joined him at the doors to the balcony. ‘Does that mean—?’

  ‘There’s no reason boats can’t leave the island.’ His voice was gruff with disappointment.

  ‘And the roads to the airport are open?’

  He could lie and say no. But she would find out the truth soon enough. ‘I’m sure they’re clearing them as we speak.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to leave the island, does it? Not when we’ve still got so much more to say to each other. Can I stay another day? I don’t have to be back at work just yet.’

  He swung around to face her, not even attempting to conceal his urgency. He couldn’t lose her again. ‘Stay, Hayley. Not just for today. Or tomorrow. Stay with me for ever.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HAYLEY LOOKED UP at Cristos, wrapped in a sheet and looking more like a Greek god than ever. ‘For ever? Surely it’s too soon to talk about for ever. We’ve only had two days back together.’ She wanted him. She loved him. But she needed more time to be certain that she wanted to commit again to a marriage that had ended in so much pain she’d had to flee to the other side of the world.

  ‘Two days? I had more than two years missing you, aching for you. It would kill me if you flew back to Australia. You are the only woman I have ever wanted. Stay here with me as my wife. Make your life with me again, koukla.’ His eyes narrowed with the sensual, hungry look that made her want to melt back into his arms and forget everything but him. ‘This time for ever.’

  He drew her to him for a quick kiss that lingered in its deliciousness. He ran his finger down her cheek and traced her lips, swollen with the countless kisses she had enjoyed during a long night of loving. Loving as she knew no other man could ever give her.